The story
Founded by Jean-Jacques Desandrouin in 1756.1
Coal was mined in the pre-industrial era for use by blacksmiths, but was seen as an inferior fuel to wood for heating a home.
Demand began to rise in the early 18th century due to population growth and limited wood supplies.
The Mons-Charleroi coal basin was lost to France in 1713 by the Treaty of Utrecht.
The Viscount Jean-Jacques Desandrouin (1681–1761) bailli of Charleroi, had made a fortune at his seignurie of Lodelinsart from a coal mine, forges and glassworks.
In 1716 he began to explore the region of French Hainaut in the hope of finding a westward extension of the Mons-Charleroi deposit.
In 1720 Désandrouin and his research director Jacques Mathieu, with a team of twenty miners, found coal at Fresnes-sur-Escaut.
The government gave Desandrouin a 20-year exclusive mining privilege and a subsidy of 35,000 livres.
He struggled on with many setbacks and great loss of money, and finally found bituminous coal at the village of Anzin in 1734, when he was on the verge of ruin. By 1756 his company had 1,500 workers and sixteen pits.
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When he learned of the discovery the Prince de Croÿ, lord of Valenciennes, asserted his rights to the deposit and a prolonged legal battle began.
On 14 January 1744 the king decreed that all minerals below the soil were the property of the crown, and could only be exploited by the landowner after a formal concession had been granted.
Eventually in 1757 the Viscount Désandrouin, Prince de Croÿ, Marquis de Cernay and others founded the first mining company in the Nord, the Compagnie des Mines d'Anzin.
The company was formally created by the merger on 19 November 1757 of the Société Desandrouin-Taffin, the Société Desandrouin-Cordier and the Société de Cernay.
Desandrouin received twelve shares of the new company, Cernay eight and Croy four.
It was one of the first large industrial companies in France.
The total concession area of 28,000 hectares (69,000 acres) was the largest in the Nord-Pas de Calais Basin.
The company introduced steam engines to operate pumps that removed water from the mines, which could reach a depth of 200 metres (660 ft).
In 1789 the company had 25 mine shafts, 12 steam engines and 4,000 miners, and produced one third of French coal.
Most of the workers were recruited locally and some were highly skilled.
Typically they worked in family teams, a practice encouraged by the company, and were paid by performance.
To retain workers the company supported families after death or disability, and provided health services and pensions.
A mine worker might start as a child of seven, dragging wagons of coal, then graduate to working on the coal face.
Typically the miner worked lying on his side since the veins of coal were rarely more than 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) thick.
After the age of 35 they would be given less demanding work in the mine or on the surface.
The mines were worked around the clock, on three shifts.
Sometimes explosives were used to open new galleries.
The work was dangerous and unhealthy, but was well-paid.
From Wikipedia’s article on Compagnie des mines d'Anzin, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3